An art historian, curator, and critic explores the relationships between art, religion, and philosophy.

August 27, 2011

I established this blog in 2008 as a platform to support the publication of my book, God in the Gallery, and to extend my investigation of ideas related to art, theology, and ethics. On July 18 I began a new phase of this investigation when I joined the Miami-based studio of Enrique Martínez Celaya as director. After fifteen years as a museum curator and art history professor, the time has come to move into the studio and the day-to-day practice of an artist who has exerted a powerful influence on my work for over a decade.

Although this blog will cease to be an active part of my work, I will remain a presence through Facebook and Twitter, athough how this presence will be manifest will emerge only in the coming months.

I appreciate those who followed this blog and took the ideas of its author seriously.

April 23, 2011

Susan Sontag has a point. In her well-known essay, "Against Interpretation" (1966), Sontag argues that the classical mimetic theory of art has created an unnecessary distinction between form and content, which modern (and now postmodern) theories have merely intensified. Interpretation presumes that art must have content that can be extracted for use outside the work. Sontag writes, "Directed to art, interpretation means plucking a set of elements (the X, the Y, the Z, and so forth) from the whole work. The task of interpretation is virtually one of translation." In the hands of interpretation, art becomes, at best, merely the visual illustration of an idea.

The implications of this essay for writing about art from a self-consciously religious, philosophical, or any other perspective that presumes a meta-narrative, are significant. Art and meta-narratives fight against one another. The meta-narrative is all encompassing. It is a worldview, a framework within which everything has a place and everything makes sense. The role of art criticism, in this context, is to demonstrate how a work of art fits securely into this schema. For these interpretions, whether Marxist, Freudian, Formalist, or neo-Calvinist, art is significant only insofar as it affirms and strengthens the meta-narrative owned by the interpreter.

Yet art is a moving target. It refuses to yield to the meta-narrative, to be framed in an interpretation. It exists only in its concrete specificity and presupposes no larger narrative, although its presence comes from the sense that the work could be nevertheless a part of a great order.

What do meta-narratives presume and why do works of art resist them? They presume the End. But they presume not only that there is such an End to an over-arching Story that unites all stories, but how particular works of art fit into it.

The consequences are dire. Art comes to possess its integrity only insofar as it can be used in an interpreter's meta-narrative, grist for the interpreter's ideological mill. Art is deprived of its own integrity as a world-making work. It becomes either a passive reflection of a meta-narrative or it needs it to give it life.

The danger of religious interpretations, which presuppose God, especially those shaped by the Christian tradition, is to lead with the End or to arrive at the End much too quickly. St. Paul and St. John appear to do precisely this when they write that it is in Christ that all things have their being, that through Christ all things are made, and that Christ is working to make all things new. "All things," as I have written in this blog, means not just art in general, but includes specific works of art. But the temptation is to interpret all works of art as merely examples of Christ's work in the work, as only evidence of or enhanced by a Christian worldview.

But Sts. Paul and John are not advocating interpretation, they are advocating faith. For those who work from a Christian perspective, the meta-narrative is not ours. It is God's. We are means by which God's meta-narrative is being written, but we are not the ones writing it. Moreover, God's meta-narrative is not an act of interpretation. It is an act of re-creation, which will reconcile all things, not only works of art but interpretations as well. Criticism that rushes too quickly to fit works of art into a Christian meta-narrative do violence not only to art but to the Christian meta-narrative itself, in which we too, like works of art, find our being as it unfolds. The Christian tradition teaches that God does not impinge upon our freedom but incorporates it. Yet it is all too easy for Christian interpreters to do violence to human freedom and the freedom of art by presuming the relationship of means to ends, to presume to be the ones in control of the meta-narrative. Andres Serrano's Piss Christ was the subject of just such a meta-narrative interpretation in Paris this past week when it was attacked by a "pious" viewer, protecting God's religion.

Moreover, God is a moving target. He cannot be contained in any narrative. The Spirit blows where it may. As C.S. Lewis writes in The Chronicles of Narnia, "Aslan is not a tame lion." While we might affirm the Christian meta-narrative as an act of faith, how it is being written is God's work not ours. We must maintain that gap between the that and the how in order to preserve the freedom of art and, equally important, the freedom of our interpretations to be more than merely "translations" but deep engagements with the work of art that preserve its unified wholeness that, nevertheless, needs no justification from interpretation, Christian or otherwise.

It is in preserving this precarious gap between belief that there is a meta-narrative and how it is unfolding that critics can allow the whispers of a work of art to be heard, whispers that might indeed point toward a deep order and structure in the world that might transcend even the most meta of narratives.

April 14, 2011

The number of studies that explore the theological orgins of modernity (and postmodernity) seem to be growing. From Michael Gillespie's Theological Origins of Modernity and Bruce Holsinger's Premodern Condition to Charles Taylor's magisterial work, The Age of Secularism, Cyril O'Regan's studies on gnostic geneologies, and the work of the Anglo theologians of Radical Orthodoxy.

This kind of work has found a delighted audience among Protestant scholars and evangelical culture makers who rightly chide the secular modernists for drafting off the efforts of the Judeo Christian tradition in general and medieval Christian theology in particular without acknowledging or realizing it.

Yet Protestant and evangelical scholars, especially those shaped by the Schleiermacher-Barth theological axis, take heed. What's good for the goose is also good for the gander. Protestants and evangelicals tend to practice the same kind of convenient historical forgetfulness when it comes to the Christian tradition they so selectively embrace. They often take for granted the formative theological leg work done on the Trinity and Christology during the fourth and eighth centuries, choosing rather to believe that it's simply the product of the "clear teaching of the Bible" and the right application of Sola Sciptura. The irony is that they take for granted this hard theological leg work even while they criticize the theologians responsible for it. (Yet this is perhaps not so surprising given the fact that Protestantism and evangelicalism, like secularism, are children of modernity.)

This is most egregious with the seventh ecumenical council, Nicaea II, which mandated the veneration of the icon as the visual means to preserve Christ's incarnation. The Council declared that Christ can (must) be circumscribed in paint because he was circumscribed in the flesh. Nicaea II was not about aesthetics or "art in the Church." It was about Christology. Yet many Protestants and evangelicals reject the insights of Nicaea II precisely because of a shallow view of Solus Christus.

Protestants and evangelical thinkers and culture makers must acknowledge the common Christian heritage of those five centuries that account for the heart of the theological tradition, a heart that continues to pump blood through the Christian body, especially through those appendages of the Reformation traditions. Moreover, and more importantly for this writer, it is also the same heart that pumps blood throughout the body of Western thought and cultural practice.

April 11, 2011

April 06, 2011

I will be speaking on Friday at the Art, Culture, Theology conference at Union University in Jackson, TN. For more information about the two-day conference, find it here. I will be speaking about ethics in the work of artist Enrique Martínez Celaya.

Both Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth have been figuring more prominently in the evolution of my thinking about ethics and culture. Given the harsh words I had for Barth's aesthetics and my irritation at Protestant theologians and scholars influenced by Protestant theology to assume uncritically that Barth is foundational to theological work in the academy, this might seem surprising. I will look forward to sharing my thoughts about Barth and his relevance for my work in the months to come.

April 03, 2011

On Monday 28 March I presented a chapel talk at Biola University in La Mirada, California, a leading evangelical university. Below is an edited version of the text.

My work as an art critic, museum curator, and art historian has been strengthened and challenged by an unusual and often overlooked book in the Bible, the book of Jonah [...] The book of Jonah is a parable at the center of which lies the deep mystery to which St. Paul refers in Eph. 3: 6, that "through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus." But before we look at Jonah we need to begin with St. John's Prologue, where it all truly begins with the Word. Let me read John 1: 3: "Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made." St. Paul refers to these two words, "all things," as well, in Col. 1: 16-17, "For by him [that is Christ] all things were created…He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." And in Eph. 1: 10, "to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ." It is easy to gloss over the jarring reality of that phrase, "all things" and reduce it to "most things" or "all things that I'm comfortable with," but by "all things" St. John and St. Paul mean precisely that, all things. If all things are made through and held together in Christ, I have to admit that includes the works of art I study and write about as well as the goals, aspirations, intentions of the artists who make them. My responsibility as an art critic, then, is to reveal the Logos that dwells in the logos of the work of art.

[...]

Jonah is the only one in the parable that that Lord has a problem with. He receives no resistance from nature: the sea, the winds, the giant fish, the vine that grows then dies, all obey His Word. He also receives no resistance from the Gentiles: the sailors repent and believe and the entire city of Nineveh, including their king, repents and believes. Only Jonah resists the word of the Lord. [...]

The parable is about our willingness to serve the Lord in the manner He intended. And what does He intend? He intends for Jonah, for Israel, for the Church, and for us individually, to live for those around us. We are embodiments of God's presence in and for the world. As Jeremiah writes to the Babylonian Exiles in chapter 29, we are to seek the good of our neighbor. Our blessings come in seeking their good. Jesus seems to be thinking about this story when he tells his disciples in the book of Matthew that the fields are plenty and ripe for harvest, but the workers are few. We are the only obstacle, then, to the Lord's work. For the Lord sees this corrupt culture not as an obstacle but a harvest. We are not used to being the problem—we arrogantly believe we're the answer: we believe that what the culture needs is more of us--Christian artists, Christian designers, Christian whatever. We assume that this judgmental attitude puts us on God's side. It is "us" against "them." And the echoes of Jonah's resentment is found in the phrases we use, like "redeeming culture," "engaging culture," and "transforming culture," and various other manifestations of the "culture wars." From my personal experience, the last thing culture needs is more Christian artists—or Christian anything for that matter. Our rhetoric not only makes it seem as if we are working against culture but also that it exists only to be changed. But in reality, we don't particular care much about changing it either, for our engagement often becomes simply the raw material for the cultivation of our own careers. There has developed a very lucrative Christian subculture and intricate Byzantine institutional framework that actually rewards us for not becoming involved in the culture, which maintains the distinctions between us by making us the only active agent working on a passive culture out there and using that engagement to build and polish our careers in here.

[...]

How is this relevant to my work as an art critic and museum curator and to your work, in the world? For the next few minutes, let's consider our Nineveh today to be Los Angeles and that we, here at Biola, enjoy the blessing of being the Lord's dove, the symbol of peace in the world. Let me share with you a few thoughts:

First, the Lord is on their side. The Lord desires all to be saved, as St. Peter writes in 2 Peter 3: 9. He is bringing all things to himself through Christ and in Christ all things hold together. When we approach the world, then, we must do so knowing that to be on the Lord's side means to be on their side as well.

Second, we have to recognize that we as the Church exist not for ourselves, but to give ourselves for the world, and not just the world in general, but that great city out there, Los Angeles. Israel is to be a light for the Gentiles, we are to be a light for the world. We have heard this time and again in Sunday school, in Bible studies, and from the pulpit. But do we know what it means and the sacrifice it implies? It means that as light and salt, we exist for the other. We are means to an end. Salt exists to preserve food and bring out its flavor; it exists for the benefit of the food. Light exists to illumine objects so we can see them better. The Church does not exist for itself. What does this mean for us, here, today, at one of the premier training grounds for evangelical Christians overlooking a modern day Nineveh? It means that we are not called to craft a successful career out of "Christian engagement with culture." The Church is not a place where successful careers are built. Many Christian culture makers and entrepreneurs, whether in art, film, design, fashion, music, or ministry operate in a hamster ball. They are in the world of culture, but they are completely sealed off from it. They can see it and think they're in it, but they can neither touch it nor be touched by it. They can tell stories about it, what it's like "out there in the culture," but they have no tangible experience of what it smells like or feels like because of this hermetically sealed hamster ball called "a Christian perspective" or "a Christian worldview" that isolates rather than reconciles. A Christian perspective, whatever that means, should dissolve into enriching those cultural practices that we illumine, that we season in order to bring out their flavor not ours. We need to be salt and light for culture, we need, as Jeremiah writes, to seek the good of our neighbors—for that is from where our blessing will come. If we are salt and light, we should disappear, dissolve into the culture for the good of the culture. We need to get off the mountain-top of La Mirada overlooking Los Angeles and seek its good, not ours, and resist the temptation to cultivate a career as a "Christian" artist, "Christian" musician, "Christian" designer....

Finally, we have to admit that it is God's mercy and love for all people that truly offends us. We delight in calling down fire from heaven to destroy the cultural prophets of Baal; we delight in declaring that the culture is debased, nihilistic, beyond repair. But it is we, the Church, who stand in the way of God's work in that very world. God's obstacle is not nihilism, postmodernism, or Godless Hollywood; it is us. The question the Lord puts to Jonah is put to us: Why should we be angry with God's mercy and love? As Jesus tells his disciples, the harvest is plenty. The problem is that there are not enough people to work the fields—to actually be in the fields, to get cut, bit by insects, dirty, and exhausted. There are however too many so-called workers standing on the edges of the field or those who trample it down in their air-conditioned hamster balls that don't feel the heat, the bites, the pain, and so cannot or will not harvest. And so, all we need to do is go into the fields. Get out of our hamster ball, climb down the mountain, walk through the city, sacrifice our lucrative career in the Christian subculture or using our Christian faith to advance our own careers and live for the good of the culture. We must risk getting pushed around, risk getting dirty and bruised and infected by the culture, by those fields that are ripe for harvest. In the parable of the sheep and goats in Mathew 25, Jesus separates them based on how they treated the least of their neighbors, whether they fed them, clothed them, loved them. This is not just about serving lunch at a soup kitchen or leading bible studies in jails. Los Angeles is chock full of poor, hungry, needy people who live in mansions, drive Bentleys, and wear Prada. But how are we to do that if we are not entangled in their lives? How are we to do that if we are more concerned with crafting a powerful and success career as a Christian speaker, Christian filmmaker, Christian designer, Christian scholar?

[...] We must remember for whom the Sign of Jonah is given in the gospels. It is not given to Nineveh, to Los Angeles, to an unbelieving secular culture, an unbelieving world, but to an unbelieving Judea, who betrays the Lord's love and demands a sign, because they have forgotten that they have been chosen for another. In other words, the Sign of Jonah is given to us, the arrogant and selfish Judeans, to us here at Biola, who believe that we are right with God and on his side. And that is why the Queen of Sheba and the Ninevites will stand in judgment of Israel, stand in judgment of us, the unbelieving Church that is resentful of God's love and mercy that is poured out lavishly on Nineveh, on Los Angeles.

I urge you to use what is left of the bright sadness of this Lenten season to read and re-read the book of Jonah and contemplate the implications for your life. May your time here at Biola prepare you to become hopelessly and wonderfully entangled in and for our culture, for it will be in this entanglement and the risks and difficulties it brings that we can truly be salt and light and serve as co-laborers with Christ to reconcile all things to and for Himself.

And May the Lord bless you and keep you, may his face shine upon you and be gracious to you, may he look upon you with favor, and give you peace. Amen.

March 06, 2011

If you want to explore the context and implications of my recent blog posts in greater detail and track other aspects of my work in real time, please follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/DanSiedell.

In association with the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, CO, the Summer Workshop offers emerging to mid-career artists a unique opportunity to be immersed in an intense week of critiques and discussions spanning a diverse and challenging range of historical, theoretical, and practical perspectives of artistic practice within the stimulating and rigorous framework of Whale & Star, the studio of Enrique Martínez Celaya.

The Summer Workshop faculty is Enrique Martínez Celaya and Daniel A. Siedell, Professor of Modern & Contemporary Art History at the University of Nebraska-Omaha and Director of Special Projects at Whale & Star.

Tuition is $950 for participants and $750 for auditors. Accommodations with double occupancy at the Marriot Biscayne can be arranged for visiting artists for an additional $475.

The application conssts of a written statement, exhibition history, reason for coming to the Summer Workshop, and ten samples of work. These materials must be sent as email attachments to info@whaleandstar.com (please limit each image to 1 MB).

The application deadline is Monday, March 14. Notification will take place by Monday, April 18.

February 18, 2011

I am curating an on-line research archive that preserves, documents, and interprets the work of artist Enrique Martínez Celaya and its critical reception. The site offers an intellectual framework for understanding the development of his work, which includes a biographical chronology, exhibition and project history, archival images, and a journal.

The journal is the heart of the archive. It will provideongoing critical analysis and commentary on all aspects of Martínez Celaya's artistic practice, aspects which are not bound to the constraints of exhibitions and publications. It will research the intentions, study the influences, and explore the implications of his new projects in addition to the work he has produced throughout his twenty-year career as an artist and writer.

The virtue of the journal is its flexibility. Blending the velocity of a blog post, the focus of a review, and the depth of a scholarly essay, the commentary will be able to respond more efficiently to the multiple dimensions of Martínez Celaya's work, which often defies categorization and frustrates more conventional forms of scholarship. Its goal is to stimulate further reflection on an artist's work that requires multiple critical and curatorial perspectives.

My writing at MARTINEZCELAYA.ORG is intended to enhance the experience and deepen the understanding of Martínez Celaya's work for curators, critics, and students that follow it. My writing at this site, however, will offer, among other things, more specific reflection on his work for those that follow the theological, philosophical, and religious implications of artistic practice. There will no doubt be significant and fruitful intersections, which will bring followers of Martínez Celaya's work and readers of this blog together.